New Player Guide
Hello there, welcome to the world of Eternia. This page assumes you're here because you're interested in trying out the game, or you recently have and was confused, or you're looking to review the basics. Regardless of your intent, purpose, and need, this guide is intended to assist you. What this guide is meant to do is give you a reasonable and brief primer so that you can be expected to live in the world of Eternia with a basic understanding of how it works, and, importantly, an understanding of how to expand from where you are and learn more. The most important thing is that you enjoy yourself, and this is a resource to help you do that! Without further ado, let us begin: Roleplay and Eternia Eternia revolves around a concept known as roleplay, and very clearly, having some basic information about what the world of Eternia is can be really helpful to a new player. 'Roleplay' Roleplaying is fairly common. If you've never done it before, or don't know what it is, it is best described as a more detailed version of 'pretend', or 'playing a role'. You create a character, designing them and their life-- Anything you want (within reason). You write as if you're that character, and you use only what that character knows to interact with the world around it. You react as that character. You love, live, and die as that character. In films and movies, the 'roleplayers' (actors) play their role/character through acting. On Eternia, we use text-based roleplaying. 'The Good' With that in mind, everyone else playing is doing it, too. In order to get a good idea of roleplay, you can look at these three articles, which are also on the rules page: *http://www.wikihow.com/Roleplay *http://skyrates.wikia.com/wiki/Roleplay/Advanced_Tips *http://www.wikihow.com/Roleplay-Online You get benefits in game from roleplaying consistently, too. For example, one of the leveling systems (and arguably the most important) focuses on roleplay exclusively, through which you get Role Play Levels (RPL) and Role Play Points (RPP). They'll be explained in greater detail later in the guide. IC refers to in-character (everything in the world of your character - story, RP, etc), and OOC refers to out-of-character (everything outside of the world of your character - real life, OOC chat, etc). 'The Bad' If you know X Secret Place's location OOCly (in real life) but your character doesn't, it is best to not allow your OOC information to enter IC. No OOC in IC! And vice versa; no IC in OOC. An example of IC in OOC would be that because of your character's death, you vent it to the killer's player in OOC chat. Other notable concepts well known as Metagaming and Godgaming. The latter may also be referred to as godmodding, but they have the same effect and refer to the same thing. Metagaming is when you take information that you learn out-of-character and apply it in order to effect what is in-character. For example, say a friend tells you their character name OOC without you having ever met them IC, and you then behave as you already knowing their name IC. Godgaming refers to when you decide someone else's actions for them, or perform your actions without giving the possibility for a response from the other player. If you have the consent of the player OOC, it can be allowed in a specific instance, but without it you are in very bad form. A good example of godgaming would be as follows: "'''Nicholas DellaNox slams his sword into the foe's chest, and quickly sweeps his legs from under him, then slams him to the ground.'"'' Note how there is absolutely no room or consideration for the potential reaction and retaliation from the other player, here; it is entirely unfair to them. 'Miscellaneous' To resolve conflict, there's the mechanical aspect known as verbing, with a 1v1 system known as verbing. It has some roleplay elements, but will not be emote/action heavy, and so it is good to know about it. The winner of a verbing session tends to have the right to do whatever they describe to the other player, unless interrupted. This is further explained in the rules. 'World' The country which the game is centered around is called “Valmasia”, within the land (planet) of “Eternia”. Valmasia is a large continent with many varied races, surrounded by the massive peace barrier. It is a massive barrier which spans for miles and is made up of massive storms and typhoons, put in place by an ancient and powerful angel named Kraus, who created Eternia, in order to protect the ravaged countries. For greater depth, it is recommended that you view the appropriate history of Valmasia here. While not necessary, it can be beneficial to your roleplay if you know a bit of the lore. 'Races' There are many races in Valmasia, most of which are accessible to play as the player without restriction. They are as follows: *''Humans:'' As one would expect. Bipedal, humanoid, that sort of thing. *''Drakanites:'' Subspecies of human closely related with dragons. They have a few characteristics similar to a dragon, and a few can shapeshift into a dragon form. *''Ookami:'' Subspecies of human known for their wolf-like traits and animalistic tendencies which separate them from standard society. Usually group fighters, and devastatingly fast. * Sirenia: Humanoid fish people, not a subspecies of human contrary to appearance. Carnivorous. * Mimic: Small creatures consisting of black goo that can shapeshift and ‘mimic’ others, including their abilities. * Oscuri: ''Group of humans touched and changed by an angel. Naturally gifted in either dark or light magic from birth. * ''Sarradian: Old race descended from a man who was made of stone. Naturally quick, but weaker and can’t take too many hits. * Yokai: Demonic beings of Eternia based on the Akuma in Atmos. Ability to evolve/mutate. * Neries: Foreigners from the continent of Nerebia. 'Application-Required Races' There are also a few races which one has to apply for on the forums in order to become. Further, custom races are also allowed, but discouraged for new players until they become more experienced. *''Dragon:'' Large, powerful, and wise. They are how you might expect a sapient dragon to be. *''Cyclopes:'' Cyclops are a race of Dim Giants inhabiting the Glacium Isthmus and the surrounding lands. *''Malpercian: Twisted humans whom have mutated right arms. Affirnity for darkness, possess Yokai blood and consumes them through their arms. *Undead: Beings whom are binded to their corpses and thus gain 'immortality'. Controlled by Necromancers. Character Creation When you initially start up the game, there are a list of links in the chat box. They are important. But other than that, you will be shown a button, it says '''Begin Journey'. After pressing it, a menu appears with a list of the different available races. It shows the name, description, and the magical specialty of your chosen race. What's a specialty? Every race in Eternia has their own specialty. They usually come with special spell trees to help them stand out. Humans, for example, do not have a specialty, but pay less on magic. Ookami pay the same amount as humans for wind magic, but pay slightly more than them on everything else. What's this fun 'Yokai' race? A very, very newbie unfriendly race. It's not recommended to choose this as your first character..! I've picked my race. What now? You pick a spawn point. You get a menu similar to the race-selection, to see what each city is about. After picking a race and spawn point, you can now make your appearance! You can use RGB sliders to alter your hair color. Here's a guide on how to color hair properly. You can always alter this in game later. There is also a choice of eye colours for you to select. Above the humanoid avatar's head is a discreet, eye shaped button. Click that. After choosing your appearance, you can now pick your character's name, age, and description. The default age is 10, so if you don't change it, you will spawn as a ten year old. You are able to select between age 1-60. Selecting age 9-30 will grant you a certain amount of starting stats which are counted towards bidaily stats, which are stat points gained every two days of you logging in Eternia; a reward for being active if you will. For the semi active players, they aren't left out as they, alongside other players, are able to gain extra points per RPP starting at RPL 120. If I have a RPL 120 character and I got rewarded up to RPL 125, as long as I haven't reached the 80 bidaily cap, I am able to get +5 stat points alongside the stats naturally gained through RPL, so I'd get 10 stat points. You are able to get up to 80 bidaily stat points per character. Then begins the in game tutorial, which you should not skip! And for hotkey settings, press F12. In game Basics And now we're finally in the game. You'll spawn in your selected village/town/kingdom. But there are a few things that it'd be useful for a new player to know about. 'The Interface' At the bottom of the screen, you will see the Spellbar, the buttons, phoenix/cracked egg emblem, health and mana bar... Something like this: #If you click this, you can see your current stats, BL and RPL, and crowns. When you gain RPL this will also allow you to increase your stats and drop a certain number of crowns. There is also a discreet "?" button on the left side of the box that appears, which gives pointers and descriptions for each of the 5 stats. #If you click here, you open up the skill interface. In this interface you are able to learn about specific skills by clicking on the icon for them. If you decide you want to learn a skill, and meet the requirements listed (usually abilities or RPP), you can press the 'Buy' button in order to get it. Some skills can be upgraded. #From here you access the guild menu. It is possible to create your own guild if you are a subscriber, or see the information for the guilds that you are currently in. At the time of this writing, there is not a maximum for the number of guilds that you may join. #This is the party system. You may click on a player until a red circle appears around them, and then press 'invite'. If they accept the invitation, they are now in your party-- In effect, it means that you will not hurt them even with friendly fire on, and will be able to assist them with certain spells and/or abilities. The limit for a single party is 3 person. #This is your quest tracker. It lists the various quests that you have accepted, as well as information about them. You may click the scrolls to access that information. #This opens up your inventory. Within it, you can equip items and use them by clicking on them. To sell or drop an item, drag and drop it with your mouse to the Item Buyer NPC situated in each kingdom's market. #This is the settings tab. Here you can do such stuff like engaging a RPB with someone (target them by clicking), editing your description, check who and how many players are online, send Admin Help requests, etc. Within your description, HTML is allowed and it can be used to make it fancy. A handy guide on HTML is available here: http://eterniaroleplay.prophpbb.com/topic5341.html . Or, type and enter the "/html" command in-game. #Though not featured in the picture, the phoenix in the middle of the bar now gradually fills up as you get closer to your next RPP reward! Disclaimer: Rewards are given out by admins, so it doesn't mean that you'll get an award automatically as soon as you fill the phoenix up. At the top right you can see three separate tabs. They affect what you see in the chat box. All: 'Shows all messages send in both IC and OOC. '''IC: '''Only shows in character messages. Such as Say Channel chat texts and red texts (RP posts). '''OOC: '''Only shows OOC messages. Such as the OOC chat and the [ { or ( ... bracketed Say Channel chat texts. If you do not wish to have IC and OOC in the same window but still wish to see them both you may press the "[]" button right of the "RP" button. 'Conversation and Actual Roleplay When you send things in chat using 'say', it is your character speaking. In order to speak Out of Character (OOC), you need to click the 'say' button until it changes to ÓOC'. By using that, you speak in OOC. You are able to speak OOCly while still using 'say', in order to give a message to the people around you. This is oftentimes referred to as LOOC, or Local OOC. In order to do this, enclose the out of character message with brackets [], paranthesis (), or curly braces {}. An example is as follows: Nicholas DellaNox: '(I'll be back in five minutes. Grabbing food.)'' Emotes, which are actions that you are performing, tend to be separated into two categories. There are the in-say emotes, which denote action by enclosing the action within brackets and adding asterisks as shown in the following: ''Nicholas DellaNox: <*steps over to the stool and, after a small hesitation, sits down.*>'' They are often also used to show thoughts, like as follows: ''Nicholas DellaNox:' '' Keep in mind that you are not capable of reading those thoughts from an IC perspective! Also keep in mind that there is not a completely standardized way of doing this, so you’ll have to go by feel a fair bit of the time. And there are the larger roleplay emotes, which are shown in red. An example is shown: '''Walking alone through the cobblestone streets of Frostvale was a rather bulky drakanite lady, roughly 7'7" in height, noting her Pureblood heritage, and followed by three armoured guards, noting her royal or perhaps noble heritage. Though she might have been pregnant as noted by the undisguisable, roundish bulge by her lower abdominals, there were many possibilities that could be true in this world, a great many things that still she was capable of accomplishing.' As she noticed a commoner-street sweeper in front and in the way of her path, Jian, she raised an eyebrow and sauntered over towards him. Despite the large and potentially fearsome appearance, her tone was warm, perhaps even welcoming! "Excuse me, are you new around here?" She asked. "I've not seen you before." Frostvale received very little visitors, as the small 'kingdom' it was. It was a natural given that Elizabeth could recognise just whom was and was not a local. "Would you like me to help you?" (Elizabeth Zirnitra) While writing a roleplay, a character will have color-shifting dots over their icon. If they have been writing one for five minutes or longer, the dots will become grey. Additionally, the name is added at the end of the roleplay automatically, not at the beginning, so you have much more freedom in writing your roleplay novel style, without needing to start it as *''Elizabeth Zirnitra'' was walking alone...*. All of your roleplaying-- Say, emotes, long roleplays, logs-- Everything is perused by the admins and rewarded based on level of quality and interest when they have time. The rewards typically come in the form of increasing the RPL, which is explained next. 'Leveling Systems' There are two, as the plural form of this section may suggest. Battle Levels (BL): Gained through the killing of Non Player Characters (NPCs). Each BL you have grants you +1 in all of your stats. You also gain BL automatically at certain points of RPL, which may be found out by typing and entering '/blchart' ingame. You can be successful throughout an entire lifetime without killing NPCs even once. Roleplay Levels (RPL): Your roleplay is saved in logs (accessible through the '/logs' command) which is, once it reaches a certain point, reviewed by an administrator. The administrator peruses the logs and rewards you with RPLs. For every RPL you gain, you gain a stat point that you can spend on any stat that you wish, and you also gain a skill point which may be used to buy skills and levels. The reward quantities lower the more you progress RPL wise. 'Stats' Every other day (48 hours) you get a free stat point (bidaily statpoints) that you may use on various stats, with a limit of 80. There are also various other ways to get stat points, such as through RPLs, BLs and Perms (limit of 100). You can spend them to increase the following stats: *'Vitality:' Determines a character's maximum health. *'Melee:' Increases the effectiveness of a character's melee skills and basic attacks. *'Agility:' Increases a character's chance to dodge, increases critical hit rate, decreases cooldown on skills, increases chance of fleeing a battle or pursuing a person fleeing, and decreases charge time on dash (Space Bar by default). *'Magic Capacity:' Determines a character's maximum mana and damage reduction (+0.1% per point). *'Magic Damage:' Determines a character's spell damage. Multiply a spell's magic damage multiplier with your amount of Magic Damage stat to determine how much relative damage your spell does. Resources of Information You probably already know that you're using the wiki. It is the compilation of knowledge and information directly pertaining to the game and the server, and is expected to be used for reference, for learning, and for expansion. It includes objective information like how certain mechanics function, as well as enriching information such as lore that you can incorporate in your gameplay. Knowing how to use it can help very much in your regular gameplay, as it is a small wealth of information. You also need to make sure you understand the rules before you actually begin playing. They can be found at the following link, and, unlike many games, are directly relevant to your in game behavior. Read them and make sure you understand them. http://eterniaroleplay.prophpbb.com/topic4.html <-- Rules Link Create your story today! Category:Guides Category:OOC Info